The Hybrid Series | Book 4 | Damned

by Stead, Nick

  Terror had him in its grip as well and he was struggling to hold the gun steady. Shooting me was his first mistake. He should have let me hunt down his female companion and attempted to save himself, then maybe he would have lived to tell the tale. Instead he’d tried to be the hero, and now he was going to pay the price.

  With a roar born of both pain and fury, I lunged again. The man lost his nerve then and started to run, my jaws closing on thin air. That was his second mistake and the last he would ever make, but I wasn’t complaining. It looked like I was going to get a good chase after all.

  My shoulder throbbed with the impact each time my hand hit the ground, spots of blood dotting the snow with a crimson trail to mark my progress. The pain only fuelled my rage. Within minutes I was leaping through the air again, and this time I wouldn’t miss.

  The man fell face down, the snow muffling the first of his screams as I landed on top of him and bit into his back. He died so much easier than the true creatures of these lands. Clothing shredded and skin tore, so thin and delicate compared with the seals I’d been living on. There was no layer of blubber standing between my hunger and the meat it craved, and my fangs pierced muscle.

  I grasped my prize in my teeth and pulled it free of the ribcage while my prey writhed beneath me, enjoying the warmth of the life still circulating from his pounding heart. Bone cracked between my jaws, lungs swelling with the air needed to sound the screams of agony and terror ringing out across the tundra. I gulped down another mouthful of flesh and crunched through bone and lung until I’d unlocked the real prize.

  His heart was still beating as I bit into it. Slick with the blood leaking out around it, the organ slid down my throat, rich and juicy. Nothing else could quite compare to that particular delicacy. My greed demanded more and again I was tempted to rip into the man I’d knocked out, but the others were approaching now. I reminded myself of the vampires’ need for fresh blood and channelled my bloodlust back into savaging my own victim.

  Without a working heart and lungs, the man was obviously doomed. He ceased his pitiful attempts to wriggle free, his muscles turning limp and lifeless as I continued to ravage them, eating my way through his body until there was nothing left but gore covered bones and the less palatable organs. What was left of his skeleton lay on a bed of ripped clothing soaked in blood. Stringy pieces of flesh clung to the bones where I hadn’t quite stripped them bare, and a dark taint surrounded the gruesome remains where more blood had stained the pure white of the ice pack.

  I rose from my kill to find Lady Sarah kneeling over the human I’d left unconscious, drinking her fill. Zee was nowhere to be seen but I could smell him nearby, along with the woman. She’d not gotten far, fleeing one predator only to be caught by another. He was also drinking his fill.

  My hunger sated, I used some of the energy I’d gained to heal my shoulder. The bullet was pushed out as the flesh knitted back together and the pain faded into nothingness. I let go of the rage then and forced the bloodlust back down into its dark pit.

  The aurora borealis returned, casting new light on the grisly scene. Such beauty seemed at odds with the mess I’d made, but those kind of thoughts no longer troubled me. I looked on the natural light display with more awe, free of any horror or remorse.

  “That was foolish,” Lady Sarah said, rising from her own meal and wiping away a trickle of blood from the corner of her mouth. “I thought you wanted to be free of all this, free of humanity. Or have we come all this way for nothing?”

  I turned my gaze on her and shrugged, my fur still wet with the essence of the life I’d taken. “We’re not there yet. When the time comes, I’ll embrace a fresh start as a wolf, or as close to a true wolf as I can ever be. Until then, the human in me is going to go on craving violence and bloodshed. Hunting seals can’t satisfy that.”

  Zee reappeared, carrying a second pack, presumably from his victim. “It’s done now. We’re just lucky they weren’t Slayers.”

  “Then who were they?” Lady Sarah asked.

  “Researchers, by the look of it.” He opened the pack and pulled out some kind of scientific instrument. “At least we can replenish our rations. There’s more food and water in here, and probably in the other packs as well.”

  They began searching the bodies for anything else of use. Selina and Gwyn had been hanging back while we fed, but now Lady Sarah had finished her meal, the witch approached the exsanguinated body and sniffed it. The polar bear in her would probably have been happy to scavenge human flesh, but it looked like she drew the line at cannibalism. She backed away without taking a single bite and stared ahead at the miles of ice still to cross.

  Once we’d taken everything we could from our three victims, the vampires punched through the ice and pushed the bodies into the ocean, hiding all evidence of our unnatural hungers for any Slayers who might pass that way, unlikely though that was. Then we set off at another run, eager to put more miles behind us before we were forced to stop again.

  We didn’t encounter any more humans in the nights that followed but I was content with seals again, feeling certain it wouldn’t be too much longer before I was hunting moose and bison with my mortal cousins. I was sure we must have passed the halfway point for this leg of the journey, and knowing that made the wait for more satisfactory hunts much easier.

  It also helped that hope had one last gift for me to keep my spirits up. The sight of light on the horizon had never been so welcome, for me at least, heralding the return of the sun. It meant we had to stop for the day so the vampires could shelter, but I wasn’t complaining. Just being able to mark the passage of time again made the break worth it. Excitement filled me as I entered our latest snow cave and my dreams were full of all the possibilities the future held. We were surely close to the haven Canada had to offer.

  The moon was waxing again when finally the moment I’d been waiting for came. My ears picked up a sound I hadn’t thought could ever be welcome after the long days and nights spent on the fishing trawler, but it was.

  “Is that what I think it is?” I said, skidding to a stop. I listened as hard as I could and felt another surge of excitement when the sound came again.

  Zee paused beside me and concentrated for a moment. His features shifted into a warm smile. “Yes, that’s the ocean you can hear. We’ve almost made it across the ice.”

  I howled with joy and dropped back down to all fours. It had been a long and trying journey filled with some of the greatest trials nature could throw at us. The Arctic had tried its best to break me and it had failed. We’d come through strong as ever with our spirits intact, and now our reward was at hand. There were still hundreds of miles to go but the worst was over. We’d almost made it.

  CHAPTER THIRTY–FIVE

  The Final Hurdle

  I was about to break into another run when there came a new sound. Zee’s smile faded, worry creeping into his features. He heard it too then. The crunch of snow beneath heavy feet. Something was coming for us. Something big.

  A second sound reached our ears, one which should have had no place in the wilderness. But the mechanical sound of a helicopter’s rotors chopping the air was unmistakable. I watched the sky with unease, though there was no sign of it yet.

  More footfalls could be heard crossing the ice pack. They were moving with a tirelessness no human could have managed, and at least one of them was too heavy to be a person. It wasn’t until they drew closer that I caught that scent again, as out of place in the Arctic as the chopper and the humans we’d killed somewhere off the coast of Greenland. The scent of death and decay.

  Zee drew his cutlass. “Something’s wrong.”

  “You think?” I said, filling in for Gwyn with a dose of sarcasm. “We can’t be too far off the edge of the ice or we wouldn’t be able to hear the waves. Should we keep going and hope we can outrun whatever this is?”

  “Could be Slayers in the flying machine we can hear. Do you really want to be dangling helplessly from our claws as
Lady Sarah and I carry you the rest of the way across the ocean? It will be hard enough to dodge any bullets aimed at ourselves, let alone you and Selina.”

  “I guess not.”

  “Swimming would prove equally as dangerous. No, we make our stand here, with solid ice to plant our feet on.”

  The others had already come to a stop, just a hundred feet ahead or thereabouts. Selina had her nose to the wind but Lady Sarah was looking back at us. Zee beckoned her over.

  “Come,” I heard her say to the other two. Gwyn didn’t need to be told – he was already running back. Selina didn’t seem to hear at first, as though her world had narrowed down to the approaching threats and everything else had shifted to a different reality, one currently out of reach. But when Lady Sarah broke into a run, Selina followed.

  “We fight?” Selina growled.

  Lady Sarah had no doubt overheard mine and Zee’s conversation already, and she didn’t look happy about the decision we’d made. “What are you doing? I agree it would be unwise to continue on our current path, but we could still outrun them if we change course. We should cross the Canadian islands and reach the mainland that way instead.”

  Zee shook his head. “It’s too late for that now. They’re here.”

  Dozens of humanoid figures had appeared, dark shadows gliding over the endless white. They were human once, but no more. Death had claimed them and the darker forces of the universe had brought them back. But nothing ever comes back the same; you should know that as well as I by now. The grave had taken all that was recognisable of the men and women they used to be and there was no restoring it.

  Like macabre doppelgangers of the people they had been in life, the newly dead ran upright, their movements almost human. They might even have been mistaken for living people from a distance, if they hadn’t been underdressed for the extreme cold we were in. Only two were dressed for the weather when they’d died. I stared in disbelief, sure we’d seen the last of them when the vampires had pushed their corpses into the sea. But there they were. Much of their bodies had been preserved in the cold waters, leaving enough of their features to identify them as our victims.

  Some of the older corpses were missing too many pieces to run. They dragged themselves over the ice at surprising speed with a mindless determination, bound to their master’s will. But it was their infinite stamina that made them most deadly. They would keep on going without need for rest or to eat, until they were ordered otherwise. Standing our ground had probably been the right decision, our various limitations making outrunning them impossible. So why did settling into a fighting stance fill me with doubts?

  “Who’s controlling them, someone in the helicopter?” I growled, eyes still fixed on the advancing zombies.

  “Helicopter?” Zee asked.

  “The ‘flying machine’ we can hear.”

  “I would say that is most likely, aye. Lady Sarah, can you bring the machine down?”

  “Of course,” she answered. “Though I would rather not leave my sister’s side.”

  Selina growled but made no comment.

  Zee’s mouth twisted into a fierce grin, baring his fangs. “I’d say the zombies are in more danger than she is like this. But we will look out for her, have no fear. I would deal with the helicopter myself but yours is the greater power, and if the necromancer is in there it’s the easiest way to win this battle.”

  “Very well.”

  “The rest of you, with me,” Zee ordered. “We keep the zombies busy till Lady Sarah kills their master.”

  Lady Sarah ran to do as he’d asked. I had a few seconds to watch her, a blur moving across the ice, then my attention shifted back to the necromancer’s puppets drawing ever nearer.

  The first of them were on us in moments. Rotting fingers grasped for living flesh to rend from bone, with a strength that far surpassed anything these unfortunate souls had been capable of as humans. Once again the Slayers had the advantage in numbers, along with the unstoppable nature of their corpse turned soldiers. Even the vampires had to rest during the daylight hours, but not zombies. We’d barely survived them in David’s dungeon, where we hadn’t so much emerged victorious as been allowed to win so we could suffer for longer. Now all bets were off, and our hopes rested solely on Lady Sarah’s shoulders. If she couldn’t stop the necromancer, we may well be doomed.

  The zombies whole enough to run hit us like a wave crashing against a cliff. We stood strong, even Selina, lashing out with all the weapons we had. Zee cleaved through the necks of the first two to reach him, their heads rolling a little way across the ice. One landed face down but the other came to a stop facing us. Its dead eyes rolled in our direction and fixed us with an eerie stare. The rest of the two bodies kept on attacking as if nothing had happened, only stopping when they lay in pieces, and even then severed arms struggled on to serve the necromancer’s will.

  I slashed at my first opponent – the female scientist from the trio we’d preyed on – and dealt what should have been a devastating blow across her throat. She staggered back a moment from the force of it but two more grabbed hold, one on each arm. There was a tug on my right side as the zombie ripped the bone from its socket. Pain lanced down the entire length of my limb with the tearing of tendons and ligaments, but by some miracle the skin and some of the muscle held, though not for long if my opponent didn’t stop pulling soon.

  Teeth bit into the bicep on my other side. I ignored the sensation as best I could and clamped my own jaws round the skull of the zombie on my right, crushing the bone in a foul explosion of crystallised blood and putrefied brains. Like Zee’s beheaded opponents, it continued in its attempts to tear me apart with its bare hands, undeterred by the loss of its head. But there was no time to do any more damage. I just managed to push it off my injured limb before the female zombie lunged for me a second time, the headless corpse falling to the ice for no more than a few seconds. It picked itself up and came at me again, arms outstretched and reaching for another purchase on my vulnerable flesh.

  My right arm hung limply by my side as I grappled with the female zombie. I could just about flex my fingers but even that small movement cost me a bucket load of agony. It was probably dislocated, and with most of the flesh torn round the shoulder joint, I was going to have to transform to regain the use of it. Until then it might as well have been pulled off for all the good it would do me.

  With my left arm, I grabbed the female zombie by her coat and threw her across the ice. She landed a few feet away, just enough to buy me some more time to deal with the zombie still chewing through my bicep, and the headless corpse intent on severing my limbs with its bare hands.

  I lifted my left arm again so that my opponent’s head was just below my own and crushed this second skull. Some of its teeth remained embedded in my arm but at least they were no longer doing any damage, and the pain was only a minor background ache compared to my right side. Its bony fingers kept their hold on the limb. I tore myself free of its grasp and punched through its rotting abdomen, intending to sever the spine. Back home it would have worked. The rotting flesh would have been soft, offering little resistance. But in the frigid air it was like punching a brick wall, and my fist didn’t make it all the way through. I was forced to withdraw my hand to defend myself against a second onslaught from the zombie trying to rip me apart, leaving a hole lined with frozen guts.

  The zombie who’d been on my right arm had now grabbed hold of my left. I pulled it towards me before it could wrench that limb from its socket as well, and bit clean through its own arm. The now severed hand didn’t so much as loosen its grip, but at least it no longer had the weight behind it to keep on pulling. I did the same to its other arm and pushed it away once more.

  The female zombie had a look of such hate on her face now. Whether it came from the soul bound back inside her mortal remains or from her master I didn’t know, but either way she looked hellbent on killing me. Her fingers reached for my damaged arm with more intelligence than the mo
vies credited her kind and I was too slow to dodge. The skin round my shoulder couldn’t take much more. I could feel it ripping and panic gripped me.

  Roaring with the sheer agony searing down my right side, I went into a frenzy, snapping and clawing at anything within reach. The female zombie’s head went the same way as the others. I would have started ripping her into pieces, but the zombie with a hole in its stomach lurched forwards again and renewed its grip on my left arm. Deprived of the teeth it had been using as weapons, it dug its nails into my wounds. To my horror I felt more tugging on my flesh, but I couldn’t defend myself against both at once, not with my injured limb. And to make matters worse, the second wave of zombies had just reached us. A legless corpse pulling itself across the ice grabbed hold of my calf and I felt my balance going.

  Just as the skin of my right arm began to tear, the pulling stopped and the female zombie released her grip. Gwyn had entered the fray, his jaws wrapped around our opponent’s ankle. She bent to grab him in a crushing grip but he was too fast, darting out of reach of those dead fingers with all the nimbleness of a true fox.

  The distraction was all I needed to right myself and bite through the arms of the zombie on my left. That took care of the immediate threat. I was given a brief respite to work on fixing my damaged limb, held on by nothing but threads now by the feel of things.

  Like with the other dislocation I’d suffered, simply shifting closer to my wolf form would not just pop my arm back into its shoulder joint. I’d no idea what the proper medical technique for relocating it was, so I was just going to have to try pushing it back as best I could and hope the transformation would fix the damage. It had worked with my hip after being hit by the car. Hopefully it would work again.

  Even the smallest of pressure was excruciating. Trying to force the bone back into its socket was almost more than I could bear, even with my high pain threshold. But I needed my arm fully functional before any more zombies latched on, so I kept on pushing against the bulge beneath my fur until it clicked back into place. The agony remained but I wasn’t able to heal the damage straight away, the zombie grasping my calf now ripping away chunks of the muscle with its teeth. Gwyn was still keeping the female zombie busy, so I turned my attention back to the legless corpse at my feet and picked it up with my good arm. My jaws made short work of its head and arms, until there was nothing but a torso.